The Half-Blood Prince
by daro-jesse
Summary: The Boy Who Lived lived because of a prophecy the Dark Lord chose to believe - but what if someone else heard that prophecy and went back in time to see that Harry Potter was never born? Alternate realities collide; a new student appears at Hogwarts, during Harry's sixth year - a boy with a stunning connection to Harry: Nikolaos Snape, The Half-Blood Prince...(H/H, D/OC)


_Author's Note: _I know people have mixed feelings about Original Characters – because I happen to be one of them! But I have had the idea for this story rattling around in my head for some time. I'm hoping it will be a chance to explore the HP characters we all know and love through a different lens, while also allowing me to create a very interesting O.C. who connects up with one of the HP characters I would so have loved to meet when he was a teenager, Severus Snape. So – read, enjoy, review! xoxo, Jesse Daro

Chapter One: Through the Looking Glass

A gust of wind pursues the boy into the Hog's Head Tavern, billowing his long black coat around his narrow frame. He steps aside for the door to close and stands for a moment on the threshold, casting around.

The bearded man with the long gray hair behind the bar glares at him with blue eyes pale as winter. The boy ignores him; probably the barkeep knows the boy isn't supposed to be here – it isn't a Hogsmeade weekend, after all, and even without his school robes, he is obviously too young to be anything but a student, sixteen at most. But the Hog's Head isn't picky about its clientele. A hag sits in one corner, flipping through the latest _Daily Prophet. _An abnormally pale man with sharp, beady eyes like a bat's is sipping a goblet of scarlet liquid (too scarlet to be wine) at the end of the bar. A student skivving off classes isn't likely to raise many eyebrows in a place like this.

At the other end of the bar sits the man the boy snuck out of Hogwarts to see.

He is hunched over a fire-whiskey, lank dark hair straggling around his gaunt cheeks, a battered traveling case shoved under the legs of his bar stool. His coat is patched. The fingernails peeking out of his fingerless gloves are dirty, cracked and yellow. He looks as though he might live out of that little traveling case.

The boy had only the vaguest report the man would be here – something he overheard Professor McGonagall say to Professor Flitwick, when she hadn't realized any students were standing just outside the doorway of her classroom. _Our dark friend, _she had said, and named a time and place to meet him.

That was six weeks ago, before the leaves began to change colors and the wind began to bite at noses as students walked down to the greenhouses. The boy has been oh-so-carefully plotting this meeting ever since.

He can feel his heart beating in his chest now as he steals across the room. His hand slips into the pocket of his coat. Underneath he wears Muggle clothes – faded jeans and an old black t-shirt with the name of a Muggle band on the front. The band t-shirt is pushing it. Students have been thrown in detention for less, but the way the boy sees it, if he is caught off school grounds speaking to one of the Dark Lord's oldest enemies, his wardrobe will be the least of his concerns.

Even his father won't be able to save him from Azkaban if he is caught talking to a member of the Order of the Phoenix. A wanted fugitive. An enemy of the Ministry.

Not that he would ever have asked his father to save him, from anything.

The boy sits down on the stool next to his target. The gray-haired barkeeper glances at them, and for a moment, the boy thinks he has miscalculated, that he will be pitched out after all; but then the barkeep goes back go polishing a dirty glass with his dirty rag, without even offering the boy a drink. Which is fine, because the boy doesn't want one.

His hand moves casually out of his pocket, onto the dirty bar. He places it palm-down, on top of a small glass phial filled with a clear, colorless, odorless liquid. It took him a month to brew it. It would have taken most sixth-years much longer – like another year, as they prepared for their N.E.W.T.s. But potions are something the boy has always excelled at.

The man next to him turns aside, coughing into his sleeve. The cough has a wet, unpleasant sound to it that seems to gurgle up from his lungs. The boy (his hands are actually shaking) leans over as if to pat him on the back, catching a whiff of sour sweat as he does – his curled fingers edge over the man's glass –

"If you tip whatever that concoction is into a perfectly good glass of whiskey, boy," the man growls, "I will turn you into the foulest, most loathsome creature I can think of. Permanently."

The boy freezes.

Bloodshot eyes turn toward him. From across the bar, Sirius Black had looked haggard. Up close, he looks positively wretched: His skin is as sallow as the yellowish rag the barkeep is now mopping the floor with (the same rag he was using to polish the glasses; the boy makes a mental note never to order a drink in the Hog's Head), and his fierce black eyes – for they are fierce, and black as night – are sunk into puffy, bruised sockets, the lids pearly gray. When he smiles acidly at the look of mingled guilt and terror on the boy's face, his cracked lips stretch back to reveal two rows of crooked, yellowing teeth.

He barely even resembles his Wanted poster. The most recent photograph the Ministry of Magic has of Sirius Black was taken seventeen years ago. Back then, Black was handsome, dashing even, with thick dark hair and a roguish grin. Now he looks like something quite recently crawled out of a grave.

"I – " the boy starts, but Black catches his wrist; his grip is painfully tight, and with a gasp, the boy opens his hand.

Black pins it to the bar. The phial sits on the boy's palm like an accusation, although the liquid inside is quite innocuous-looking. It could be water. It wouldn't even taste different from water, which is the beauty of this particular potion. Black's lips curl.

"Veritaserum," he says, icily, and raises his gaze to the boy's blanched face. "And where would a pup like you come by Veritaserum?"

"I brewed it," the boy can't resist saying, with a touch of arrogance.

Black's eyebrows draw together. His gaze moves over the boy's face, as though he is seeing him, _really _seeing him, for the first time.

A curtain of ink-black hair falls to the boy's chin on either side of a strong, well-sculpted face. His nose has a slight hook to hit, imperfect enough to prevent him ever being called handsome; still, there is something arresting about him. It might well be his eyes, which are a very bright green, or his skin, which is pale as milk, the skin of someone who prefers to spend most of his time indoors, hunched over books and cauldrons. The long black coat emphasizes the slightness of his tall, narrow frame.

It is not difficult to imagine the figure he must cut at Hogwarts – a dark prince haunting the halls, preferring the company of shadows to the company of classmates. Most agree he looks like his father, but there is enough of his Muggle-born mother in him, particularly those eyes, to remind everyone of his half-blood heritage. Something that prat Draco Malfoy and the boy's other Slytherin Housemates never let him forget.

Not that he would want to.

Apparently, Black only sees the paternal side of the boy's family resemblance. "Snape," he says, through his teeth.

The boy nods, refusing to draw his hand back even as Black's filthy nails dig into his wrist. "Nikolaos Snape," he says, and adds: "Lily Evans was my mother."

Niko is counting on this to be the common cord between them. Everyone knows Sirius Black and Lily Evans were friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry – and thereafter, original members of the Order of the Phoenix. Albus Dumbledore's brightest students, before the Dark Lord – or, rather, the Dark Lord's most loyal servant – murdered him. Niko holds a picture of them in his mind, based on an old photograph he stumbled across in his father's study one time, of his mother as a young, smiling redheaded girl sitting on the steps to the Astronomy Tower, and the Wanted posters he has seen of Sirius Black.

But instead of relaxing, at the mention of Lily, Black's gaunt face contorts. His grip tightens; Niko winces, feeling the small bones in his wrist start to give, and someone says, quietly, "Let the boy go, Sirius."

It is the barkeeper. Niko half-expects Black to throw his fire-whiskey in the old codger's face (who is he, to order Sirius Black about?) but, to his surprise, Black lets go of him and sits back, raking lank hair out of his eyes.

Niko draws his hand back and pockets the phial of Veritaserum. He isn't about to waste it. Just because it hasn't helped him at the moment doesn't mean there won't be other opportunities to use it.

"What do you want?" Black demands.

"I want to know where my mother is."

Niko sees no reason to lie. Yet Black regards him with open suspicion from underneath his heavy brows. The vestiges of the handsome young man in those posters can still be seen, in the symmetry of his bone structure, but his eyes are hollow, lightless tunnels all the way to his soul. "You think I'm her Secret Keeper," Black finally says.

Niko shrugs. "Who else? You were her best friend – she trusted you more than anyone – "

"That was a long time ago," Black says, softly, but a look passes between him and the barkeeper that lets Niko know there is more, much more, Black is not saying about Lily Evans.

Loosening Black's tongue was, of course, the whole point of the Veritaserum. Niko hadn't expected the man to simply open up to him, even if he is Lily's only son.

Niko sits back on his stool and glares at Black. He knows he should be afraid. Sirius Black is a killer – he single-handedly defeated Bellatrix Lestrange, Voldemort's top lieutenant, in the battle that followed Dumbledore's murder and the Ministry's attempt to round up the remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix, fifteen years ago now. Black is a dangerous man by all accounts, unhinged by years on the run, fanatical in his opposition to the Dark Lord, his Death Eaters, and the anti-Muggle faction that now controls the Ministry of Magic. Six years ago, after the Muggle-Born Registration Act finally passed into law (following the assassination of several high-ranking members of the Wizengamot who had long opposed it), Black nearly succeeded in blowing up the Ministry in protest.

So _The Daily Prophet _reported. Niko can't help wondering if there was more to that story. He remembers a knock on the door of his father's mansion in the dead of night, Lucius Malfoy hustling in from the cold, whispers about the Department of Mysteries and some prophecy Black had been after drifting up to the landing where Niko crouched in the shadows, listening…

He shakes the memory off now. He hasn't come this far only to be turned back to the castle like a child sent to bed without supper. "She is my mother," he says, coldly. "I have a right to know where she is."

"Why don't you ask your father? Oh, that's right." Black's eyes glitter. "She went into hiding to escape _him_."

His tone makes it clear he thinks Niko is just as bad as his father. Niko's cheeks burn. "I didn't ask to stay with him, you know."

"No." Black's voice is like ice. "She left you with him. Maybe that should tell you something about her feelings for you."

If he expects that to send Niko dashing off in tears, he is sorely disappointed. It is nothing Niko hasn't heard before. _Hey Scuzzy, is it true your own mudblood mother didn't want you? _Or: _I think I'd rather marry a Squib than a mudblood, don't you, girls? _"I don't care," Niko says, firmly. "I want to find her. I want to help her."

"Wherever your mother is," says Black, "I doubt very much she needs _your _help. What are you, fourteen?"

"Sixteen," Niko says, impatiently, "and I don't mean – I mean I want to _help _her. _You. _All of you. I want to join the Order of the – wait, please!" He half-rises, as Black downs his whiskey with a flick of his wrist and stands up, dropping a few Sickles on the bar. "I want to help you kill Voldemort."

Black stops and stares at him. It seems to Niko the tavern has become very still, but that could just be because he can't hear much over the blood pounding in his ears.

He has finally said it. Out loud. He, Nikolaos Snape, son of the Dark Lord's most faithful servant, heir of the man who betrayed and murdered Albus Dumbledore, wants to kill Voldemort.

After a moment, Black begins to button the remaining snaps on his coat. Every time he breathes, he wheezes. Niko glances out the window, at the flakes of snow swirling in the twilight gloom, and wonders what sort of hovels a hunted man like Black has to seek shelter in on nights like these.

"Go back to school, boy," Black says. He sounds disdainful, but also, tired. Wearied to the bone. "Greater wizards than you have tried to kill Voldemort. You won't be the one to succeed."

"You don't know that – "

"Actually," Black interrupts, coldly, "I do." He looks up at Niko then, something very much like hatred stamped onto his ruined features. "You're not the son Lily Evans should have had. You're not the boy we need. Your father saw to that when he killed James Potter."

Niko stares at him in perfect confusion. James Potter? Niko has never heard that name. It means nothing to him. He doesn't think he even goes to school with anyone named Potter. "Please," he persists, sliding off his stool. "She's – she's my mother. If it were your mother, in hiding all these years, wouldn't you want to see her again? Wouldn't you want to protect her, help her so she didn't have to hide anymore?"

Once again, he seems to have said the wrong thing: Black's face tightens into a sneer. "My mother was quite the ardent supporter of your precious Dark Lord. The saddest day of her miserable life was when I rid the world of my deranged cousin Bellatrix Lestrange. I'm afraid I don't share your desire for a maternal reunion. Now, if you'll excuse – "

Abruptly, Black stops. Niko follows his gaze to the window.

Three figures are hurrying up the dark, quiet street toward the Hog's Head, shaking snow off of their Ministry robes.

That is all Niko sees before something strikes him in the gut.

He doubles over; he isn't allowed to stay that way, however, for an arm – much stronger than an arm that thin and wasted should be – wrestles him around, cutting off his air as it tightens around his neck. Niko has a moment to appreciate just how sour Black really smells before he is slammed against the wall. Black's eyes bulge inches from his. The tip of his wand presses against the pulse hammering in Niko's throat.

"Don't," Black warns.

Niko's hand freezes on its way to his back pocket, to the wand stowed there. Holly, eleven inches long, with a phoenix feather core. Niko doesn't delude himself he could take Black in a duel anyhow. Dueling, Quidditch, feats of arms and physical prowess in general, these are not Niko's strengths. Niko is subtle. Clever. A potions master. He operates best from the shadows.

"Did he send you here? Did old Snivellus send his brat to distract me while the wolves were circling, is that it?"

Black's voice is a hiss. He looks truly demented, eyes burning like coals, lips curled back from his crooked teeth; his breath fans Niko's face, ripe with more than whiskey. Niko stares at him, and for the first time, it sinks in. Sirius Black is dying. He can smell the rot on his breath, leaking out of his pores.

"I don't know what you're on about," he manages to gasp. "No one sent me – my father would kill me if he knew I was here – "

"Sirius!" The barkeeper's whisper is hoarse, but once again it brings Black around, like this grizzled old man boasts some authority Niko is entirely ignorant of. The hag and the vampire have cleared out. The three Ministry figures are practically on the threshold; Niko can hear them stamping snow off their boots. The barkeeper motions frantically at Black. He is holding open what appears to be a trapdoor beside the blackened, unswept hearth. "Get over here, you great sodding idiot! Or do you think you're up for taking on three Aurors in your state?"

Black's wand hand twitches. Niko can see him warring with himself – better to die in a blaze of glory, or a sick, hunted man all alone in some hovel?

Black glances at him. Inexplicably, as he looks into Niko's bright green eyes, his fever-glassy gaze seems to clear. Roughly, he steps back.

"Come along, boy," he growls. "You're coming with me."

The trapdoor drops down into a hole. Literally. Niko's trainers land in an inch of mud, and he stumbles into an earthen wall in an attempt to steady himself. Black's boots splash down a moment later, and he seizes Niko by the back of his coat.

"Walk," he commands, grimly.

There is no light in the tunnel; they find their way by Black's wandlight. He keeps a grip on Niko's collar the whole time, like he thinks he will run away otherwise. Where would he go? Niko wonders. The tunnel is too narrow to hide in – Black would trip over him – and Niko isn't racing headlong into the darkness without even his wand, which Black has relieved him of.

He wouldn't run away anyhow. Niko wants an audience with Black. This whole day, hiding out in the library, skipping dinner, stealing through the deserted corridors to the secret passage behind the One-Eyed Witch while everyone else was in the Great Hall, has all been about convincing Black to tell him where his mother is. Black _has _to be her Secret Keeper. Niko has thought about this for years, and Black is the only person it makes sense for Lily Evans to have trusted with her life. Almost everyone else she knew in the Order of the Phoenix is dead or in Azkaban.

Surreptitiously, he fingers the small glass phial in his pocket.

At last, after what seems a very long way in the dark and the cold, the tunnel slopes upward. Niko blinks. Light fills a doorway up ahead, and the next thing he knows, Black is shoving him into –

A room. A room with no windows, no exits at all that Niko can see, other than the tunnel they just entered by. The floorboards look rotten. The walls are warped with damp and age. A pile of moldering blankets in the corner and a collection of butterbeer caps suggests someone has actually been _living _in this dump – a fact confirmed when Black walks over, sinks with a sigh onto the blankets, and kicks off his muddy boots. His socks are so full of holes Niko can see the blackened bottoms of his skinny feet.

"Where are we?" he asks.

"Shrieking Shack," Black replies, tersely. Then doubles over, coughing.

Niko stays by the entrance to the tunnel during this. The room is so cold his breath is visible in front of him. He buries his hands deeper in the pockets of his coat and looks around.

Spider webs lace the walls. A few pathetic embers glow in the small grate. Several weeks' worth of _Daily Prophets _are stacked in the corner, and when he sees that, his heart sinks. How long has Black been living in Hogsmeade, trapped like a rat in its hole under the noses of the Aurors? How long has he been this ill? If he really is Lily's Secret Keeper, why doesn't he just go into hiding with her? "I thought this place was haunted," Niko says.

"You'd be surprised the riffraff a tale like that'll keep out," Black says, dryly, and then snaps, "Don't look in that."

Niko swings around. He was about to peer into a large, oval-framed mirror propped in the corner – dusty, yet still out of place as the only piece of furniture in this horrid little cell. (He can't help but think of it as a cell. Why else wouldn't there be any windows or doors? Locking others out also means locking yourself _in._) Inscribed on the frame is a curious incantation: _Erised stra ehry oyt ube cafru oyt on woshi._

After a moment's study, Niko says: "I show not your face but your heart's desire."

Black grunts, grudgingly impressed. He is leaning back on his elbows now, still holding his wand loosely in one hand. Niko's wand is tucked into the pocket of his old trousers. "So you're not entirely stupid," Black says. "Do you know what it means?"

"It's the Mirror of Erised. It shows you what you desire most in the whole world. It's supposed to be very dangerous."

"Desire can be dangerous," Black says, so quietly Niko isn't entirely sure he said anything at all. He shifts his feet, tracking two paths in the dust.

"What's it doing here?"

"Dumbledore asked a friend of mine to look after it, years ago. This is normally his place. He's letting me use it while he's on holiday." Black smiles again, baring his teeth. "Let's make ourselves at home, shall we?"

He points his wand at the grate, and the fire blazes up. Another flick; two butterbeers float out of the traveling case he has dropped in the corner. Niko snags them both out of the air. "I think you'd do better with some plain water," he says.

Black watches him pour water into a dirty glass from the small pitcher on top of the hearth. Niko carries it over and hands it to him. When Black hesitates, Niko rolls his eyes, put the cup to his own lips, and drinks. "Satisfied?" he says, wiping the back of his mouth on his sleeve.

"I suppose," Black murmurs. He takes the cup. Niko goes to lean against the wall as he drinks from it.

"Were you leaving?" he asks.

He nods at the traveling case. Black shrugs. "Maybe."

"Were you going somewhere for the Order?"

Black's expression is inscrutable. "What does a boy like you know about the Order of the Phoenix?"

Niko says: "I know Albus Dumbledore founded it to oppose Voldemort when he first started to come to power. I know the members kept on fighting even after my father betrayed Dumbledore's trust and murdered him. I know you aren't really terrorists, even though that's what Voldemort's puppets in the Ministry want everyone to believe. I know you hate this pureblood mania as much as I do, and I know if anyone is going to defeat Voldemort, it will be the Order of the Phoenix."

"No," Black says. "It won't."

He seems surprised to hear himself say it. As surprised as he was by the forthrightness of Niko's answer. His hollow black eyes widen, and Niko, mindful of Black's wand, holds up the small glass phial of Veritaserum. Which is now empty.

Black's mouth rounds. "But – you drank it!"

"I never intended to lie to you," Niko says, simply.

He waits then. He stands stock-still, giving Sirius Black a perfect opportunity to hex him, or even kill him, before he can ask a question. Because Niko wants Black to know he is not his enemy.

_I am not my father, _he thinks.

"What do you want?" Black asks, hoarsely.

"I already told you. I want to find my mother. I want to join the Order of the Phoenix and help you stop Voldemort." Niko cannot lie right now; Veritaserum is coursing through his veins like poisoned honey, drawing out the truth. Black knows this. He has no choice but to accept it. Yet Niko can see he does not want to. He doesn't understand that. Black hating his father he understands, but Severus Snape is only one half of Niko. Lily Evans is the other. "I left Hogwarts today never intending to go back. I don't want to be at my father's school. I don't know what Hogwarts used to be, but now it's just a place where they teach us to be Death Eaters and to hate anyone who isn't pureblood. I'm never going back there. I can't. I can't take it anymore. Either you tell me where my mother is, or I'll – I'll – "

Niko can't finish. He can't tell what he doesn't know. What does he intend to do, if Black can't lead him to Lily? He'll have to find another way to fight Voldemort. He won't become the son his father wants him to be. He would rather die than serve the Dark Lord.

Black looks up at him. "I don't know where your mother is," he says.

Niko feels like a wave has just crashed over him.

Pressing back against the wall, he slides down it so he is sitting on the floor, and puts his head in his hands. "Do you know who does?" he asks, his voice muffled.

"No." Black speaks slowly. Whether he is struggling against the potion or just his own better judgment in revealing so much to a stranger, to Severus Snape's _son_, Niko can't tell. "I haven't seen your mother in fifteen years, since – since the night Dumbledore died, and it came out that your father killed James while we were in our last year here at Hogwarts, that Snape had been lying to all of us, to Dumbledore, to Lily, from the beginning. Earning Dumbledore's trust so he could hand the Order over to the Death Eaters at precisely the right moment to ensure Dumbledore's downfall. I told…I told Dumbledore not to trust him. Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater. And I always knew James' death was suspicious – falling off the Astronomy Tower, very convenient, and no one there to witness – "

Black drags in a shaky breath. Niko stares at the wood-grain pattern on the floor. The backs of his eyes are burning, and not from all the dust in this room. "Lily was one of the few to escape the Ministry that last night," Black goes on, softly. "We were there to – collect something. A weapon. Something Voldemort had been after for a very long time."

"What was it?"

Niko scrapes back his curtain of dark hair as he asks this, looking at Black across the room. A shudder moves through Black; for a moment, Niko feels a stab of guilt – it's not that he's above coercion, but he doesn't relish forcing someone to tell him their deepest, darkest secrets, either. Then he realizes Black isn't reacting to the pressure of the potion. He is coughing.

When he takes his hand away from his mouth, it is spattered with blood.

Niko gets up and pours another glass of water from the pitcher on top of the hearth. Black takes it from him with a wry smile. "A prophecy," he says.

Having almost forgotten his question, Niko starts to shake his head, but Black isn't finished. "Before you were born, not long after Snape and your mother were married, a prophecy was made, about a child who would defeat the Dark Lord. Dumbledore was the one to hear it. He believed it to be a true prophecy, but none of us could understand how it could be fulfilled, because – because the events it seemed to refer to, the child it spoke of being born – it wasn't possible. And that was when Dumbledore became convinced someone else had learned of the prophecy, and had gone back in time to change things. You've heard of a Time Turner?"

Niko nods. "Of course. But their use is highly restricted – "

" – because to meddle with time is to meddle with the very fabric of reality." Black sets the glass on the floor. Spots of color rouge his lifeless cheeks; he is wearing himself out, and part of Niko wants to tell him to stop, they can talk more tomorrow, but part of him knows Sirius Black doesn't _have _until tomorrow. "Dumbledore had a plan. I don't know what it was, but he wanted that prophecy kept safe from Voldemort. I think – I've become convinced that he intended to see the prophecy come true somehow. He still believed Voldemort could be thwarted."

"That's why you tried to blow up the Ministry a few years ago," Niko says, quietly. "Not because of the Muggle-Born Registration Act. To protect the prophecy."

"I had a – revelation, you might say." Black coughs again. His thin hands tremble as he wraps the blankets tighter around his shoulders. "I looked in that mirror over there, and I saw – how it all could have been different. How it _should _have been. Lily. James. Their son. _The Boy Who Lived._"

Niko feels like he has swallowed a block of ice. Lily. His mother. And James, James Potter. They were supposed to have a son. "A son who what?" he whispers. "A son who what, Sirius? A son who defeats Voldemort? Sirius? _Sirius_? Did my father kill James Potter because of this boy? To stop him from being born?"

Sirius Black does not answer. His eyes are wide open, staring over Niko's shoulder at the Mirror of Erised. It almost looks like he is smiling.

It is a long moment before Niko stands up; draws the blankets over Sirius Black's face, covering his unseeing gaze; takes his wand from Black's pocket; and walks over to the mirror.

At first, all he sees is a tall, thin boy in a long black coat, with a hooked nose and straight black hair wedge-stopped at his chin. Then, as Niko stares, another boy appears in the glass, walking toward him as if from a great distance; he, too, is tall and thin, but not in the same way as Niko. Niko is slight. Petite. This boy is built like an athlete, small like the best Quidditch Seekers always are – light and agile. His hair is an unruly brown mop, combed down over a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. Behind his round glasses, his eyes are a very bright green.

He is carrying a beautiful goblin-made silver sword with an elaborate ruby-studded handle. Niko immediately recognizes it as the Sword of Godric Gryffindor; the sword was confiscated by the Ministry years ago, of course, along with any other relics pertaining to the Muggle-loving founder of Gryffindor House, but Niko has always made it a point to know about things the Ministry doesn't want him to know about. His heart gives a kick as he looks into the grim, set face of the boy holding the legendary sword. _I show not your face but your heart's desire._

Niko reaches out a hand. He expects to touch the cold, unyielding surface of glass; so it is, to his astonishment, that his hand passes _through _the glass. He cries out; a gust of wind blows through the Shrieking Shack – which isn't possible; there are no windows or doors inside the Shrieking Shack, and yet, impossibly, a hurricane of dust is flying around Niko, blinding him, choking him…Instinctively, he tries to pull him arm back, but he can't…Something icy is creeping up wand, into his fingers, then into his shoulders…It spreads down his chest, into his legs, right to his toes…There is a voice, hoarse, raspy, whispering in his ear: _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies ... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not ... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies .._

And then, as suddenly as it began, everything stops.

Staggering in the silence, Niko opens his eyes.

He is standing in a room he knows well – the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His father's office. The room is round with a high ceiling. The walls are crowded with portraits of former Headmasters. There are also lots of spindly tables holding all manner of strange devices, and the Sorting Hat, up on its shelf, snoring softly through the slit in its flap. Moonlight sprinkles the snow-covered grounds beyond the windows.

The man sitting behind the desk, observing Niko through pale blue eyes, is not Severus Snape, however. He is an old man with white hair and a long beard, wearing purple robes speckled with moons and stars. "Good evening," he says, pleasantly, as though strange boys materializing in his office is an everyday occurrence; and before Niko can think of anything at all to say, the ice in his veins freezes solid all at once, and he faints dead away.


End file.
